“For you—aye.”
“Nay—for you.
“We'll say for both of us, then,” he compromised. “See, Ruth, your cousin grows weary, and I have a couple of comrades who are no doubt impatient to be gone. It may not be good for us to tarry in these parts. Some amends I have made; but there is one crowning wrong which I have done you for which there is but one amend to make.” He paused. He steadied himself before continuing. In his attempt to render his voice cold and commonplace he went near to achieving harshness. “It may be that this crackbrained rebellion of which the torch is already alight will, if it does no other good in England, at least make a widow of you. When that has come to pass, when I have thus repaired the wrong I did you, I hope you'll bear me as kindly as may be in your thought. Good-bye, my Ruth! I would you might have loved me. I sought to force it.” He smiled ever so wanly. “Perhaps that was my mistake. It is an ill thing to eat one's hay while it is grass.” He raised to his lips the little gloved hand that still rested on his wrist. “God keep you, Ruth!” he murmured.
She sought to answer him, but something choked her; a sob was all she achieved. Had he caught her to him in that moment there is little doubt but that she had yielded. Perhaps he knew it; and knowing it kept the tighter rein upon desire. She was as metal molten in the crucible, to be moulded by his craftsman's hands into any pattern that he chose. But the crucible was the crucible of pity, not of love; that, too, he knew, and, knowing it, forbore.
He dropped her hand, doffed his hat, and, wheeling his horse about, touched it with the spur and rode back towards the thicket where his friends awaited him. As he left her, she too wheeled about, as if to follow him. She strove to command her voice that she might recall him; but at that same moment Trenchard, hearing his returning hoofs, thrust out into the road with Vallancey following at his heels. The old player's harsh voice reached her where she stood, and it was querulous with impatience.
“What a plague do you mean, dallying here at such a time, Anthony?” he cried, to which Vallancey added: “In God's name, let us push on.”
At that she checked her impulse—it may even be that she mistrusted it. She paused, lingering undecided for an instant; then, turning her horse once more, she ambled up the slope to rejoin Diana.
CHAPTER XIII. “PRO RELIGIONE ET LIBERTATE”
The evening was far advanced when Mr. Wilding and his two companions descended to Uplyme Common from the heights whence as they rode they had commanded a clear view of the fair valley of the Axe, lying now under a thin opalescent veil of evening mist.